This is awesome. I didn’t know Khushwant Singh’s column still regularly appeared on the Hindustan Times. I used to be a regular reader of his column “Malice Towards One and All“, and particularly liked the joke at the end of the column. Turns out, at 94, he is still at the top of his game.

Today I came across his article titled “How to Seduce the Taliban” from a few weeks ago. It had the following joke at the end:

The Kashmir dispute solved
A representative from India at the UN Assembly began: “Before beginning my talk, I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named. When Rishi Kashyap struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath.’ He took off his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.”

The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, “What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.”

The Indian smiled and said, “And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech saying that Kashmir has been an integral part of India all along.”

(Contributed by Vipin Buckshey, New Delhi)

Nice, isn’t it? The Pakistanis and Kashmiri separatists seem to forget that they have not been around long enough to claim that Kashmir is “historically” separate. Just changing the religious demography doesn’t wipe off history.

—Update April 30, 2008:

Turns out this joke is used by many communities around the world where there is a historical land dispute: